Randy Cox Narrator Wayne Eddy Interviewer February 14, 2007 The Wayne Eddy Affair KYMN Radio WE: Well, thank you and good morning. I just learned that Tom Furlong's General Motor Superstore is now a sponsor on the Wayne Eddy Affair, five days a week. Thank you, Tom, and I sure do appreciate that. Today is February 14th, 2007, Valentine's Day. My wife has been out of town since Monday, so we're going to meet tonight and enjoy Valentine's Day—although we swore we're not going to buy each other gifts or anything like that, just make it normal. However, I did go shop at Anna's Closet, and I did get her something, I can't just resist that. We have a great lineup of people coming into our studio each and every day, Monday through Friday, on the Wayne Eddy Affair. I've asked you to call me and let me know of people you know that are interesting, that you think would be a good interview on the Wayne Eddy Affair. I got a call from Mr. Johnson over at the Conoco station here in town, and he mentioned an individual by the name of Cox, first name.... RC: Randolph. WE: Randolph. Do you like Randolph or Randy? RC: Randy, actually. WE: Randy Cox. So I'm going, “I don't know who this guy is.” He says, “He's a former librarian at St. Olaf College.” RC: That's right. WE: And that you're an expert on Sherlock Holmes. RC: Well, I know quite a bit about Sherlock Holmes. WE: And that you write dime novels. RC: Well, I don't write them, but I do read them, and I edit a little magazine called Dime Novel Roundup, for people who collect them. See, dime novels are the nineteenth century's paperbacks. WE: Right. The Old West. RC: The Old West is part of the theme, yes, and of course, Jesse James appeared in quite a number of dime novels. WE: Did you do something for the James Younger Gang? Any research on dime novels? RC: Well, I helped to mount an exhibit at the Northfield Arts Guild many years ago. They were doing “Jesse James in Popular Culture,” and I supplied covers for some of the dime novels that Jesse James had appeared in. I think they filmed it for local-access television, and every once in a while, somebody would tell me that they had seen me on television and I'd say, “What?,” because I don't have cable, so I didn't get the program. WE: Do you live out in the country? RC: Yes, I'm in rural Northfield, just outside the city limits of Dundas. WE: By the way, folks, if you're wondering what's going on here, a lot of people will dial across their radios, and if they hear a couple of people talking, they kind of eavesdrop. And that's what this show is all about. This is a small-town radio station in Northfield, Minnesota, where our studios are right on the main street, called Division Street, just south of Second Street. The Cannon River is behind us. We have this big picture window that faces the street, people walk by, we say hi. It's just a lot of fun. When I came in this morning, you were already here. We call it the Green Room. Of course, it's not green. RC: Old theatrical term. WE: Anyhow, I introduced myself to you, and I said, “This can be interesting, I'm going to be talking to you and I don't believe I've ever had the pleasure of meeting you before.” And you said, “Ah, but we have.” RC: Yes, we have, because about twenty years ago, there was a fundraiser for the Northfield Arts Guild. It was at the time of the popularity of the Agatha Christie movie Murder on the Orient Express, so we had the Murder on the Northfield Express. I wrote the script for that little mystery. I have no memory of just exactly what happened, except a couple of points in it. At one point, it all seemed to be chaos. The mystery was laid out and people were making guesses as to what the solution was and picking up on the clues and things like that, and I still remember, you came along and asked me, “Well, is it going as well as you anticipated?” And I sort of paused for a minute and I said, “Yes, I think it is. In fact, I think it's going better than I anticipated.” WE: Isn't it funny how you remember little things like that? Like, why would you remember I asked that question? I think I had a roll in that script. RC: I believe you did. WE: And I think a gal named Kay Brown was the Arts Guild Director at that time, and she went on to become a legislator for one term. And Dan Freeman, of course, was involved. I can't recall everything, but I do remember you gave us instructions: stick to the script, and if they ask the right questions, you've got to be honest with them. But you can mislead them in other ways. RC: Yes. Everyone had a role to play, and they had certain characteristics. If you stuck within that, I think you were safe. You couldn't consciously mislead them, but just don't give them too much information. I still remember the ending of it, when I gave the solution, and there were people who were, let we say, not terribly thrilled with the way things worked out, because they had guessed a different villain. In fact, I don't think any of the participants even knew who the villain was until we got to that point. WE: That was the fun part of it, because I could have been the villain and not known it. RC: Oh, I know—I think it was Charlie Black who turned out to be the villain. And did he ever chew up the scenery in his final scene there! WE: Charlie Black, there's a guy I've got to get on the air too. He's been around a long, long time. And we are just having a good time right now, Randy Cox is our guest on KYMN Radio. [Commercial 7:14 to 8:42] WE: My guest this morning is Randy Cox, and to give a better description of Randy: are you retired now? RC: Yes, I am retired. WE: From St. Olaf College. RC: From St. Olaf College. WE: As the head librarian. RC: No, I was never the head librarian, but I was a reference librarian. WE: Now, you can get a doctor's degree in Library Science. RC: Yes, you can. I don't know how many people do that. In fact, I only remember one person who went back to library school and got a Ph. D in it. Mostly that will put you into the administrative field, or teaching the field. I was satisfied with a master's degree, which is the terminal degree for Library Science, although I did go back to the university at one time. One of my other interests is Scandinavian Studies. WE: Oh my gosh. RC: Up at St. Olaf, of course, that kind of an interest can get you a little ways along. When I was in library school, I guess I was a little uncertain about whether I wanted to be a librarian at that point. I went over to the Scandinavian Studies department there and talked to a man named Marion Nelson about what it would take for me to switch to a Scandinavian major, a Norwegian major, in graduate school. And that's the first time I heard the phrase, “Though the supply is small, the demand is still smaller.” So I went back to being a librarian, but it's always stuck in the back of my mind. I'd liked to have pursued some studies in that area. So, a number of years ago, I went back to the university and worked on a second master's degree—which, after a while, I decided really wasn't for me after all. But that's just one of my other interests. WE: Now, as a librarian, I'm sure that you work with other colleges and universities in the state and particularly in the metro area. Are you familiar with the St. Thomas O'Shaughnessy Library? RC: I know of it. I've never been there. But I do know that it's a very fine library. WE: I've said on this show before, there's always a connection between my guests, somehow, some way, you connect. We already connected because we got together twenty-some years ago. But I had an uncle that was the head librarian, and had a degree in Library Science, that actually opened the O'Shaughnessy Library back in the fifties. I remember having to carry the books from one location all the way across campus to another location. So every time I'd drive by there, I'd say, “I put those books in there.” And it just popped in my mind: is the Dewey Decimal system still functional? RC: It's still functional, but there are more and more libraries who seem to be going to the Library of Congress system, which is a little more flexible, I think, a combination of letters and numbers rather than just numbers. But when you mentioned carrying the books at St. Thomas, that, of course, is a famous story at St. Olaf. When the school opened, or shortly after it opened, the first library was in Steensland Hall. WE: Why don't you tell us where that is, physically, to Old Main? RC: It's very near Old Main. In fact, it's the first building right next to Old Main on the campus. But when they built Rolvaag Library and opened it in the 1940s, they carried the books from Steensland across campus to Rolvaag Library. There are some people who were students there at the time who remember that. By the time we did the renovation of Rolvaag Library into the facility that it is today, you couldn't do that any more, because there were too many caveats about the use of help and damaging books and things like that. WE: The lawyers would be watching. RC: The lawyers would be watching, yes. WE: [Laughs] Child labor or minimum wage or stubbing your toe. Well, it's eighteen minutes after nine o'clock on the Wayne Eddy Affair on KYMN Radio, and Randy Cox is my guest on KYMN. Randy, let's start finding out all about you. First of all, when were you born? RC: I was born in 1936. WE: 1936. Where would that have been? RC: That would have been in Albert Lea, Minnesota. WE: Oh, my goodness, Albert Lea, okay. How long did you live there? RC: I spent most of my time there until I went off to college, in 1955. Then I was away from Albert Lea most of the time. I've been in Northfield since 1962. WE: Oh, you're an old-timer. What about your mom and dad? Let's talk about your mom. What was her maiden name? RC: My mother's maiden name was Onsum. WE: Sounds like a Norwegian name. RC: Yes, she was both Norwegian and Swedish. Came from northern Minnesota, grew up in a little town called Glyndon. WE: I've heard of that, for some reason. RC: We had relatives up in that area. In fact, my father's relatives were in northern Minnesota, a little further east, in Pine River. I remember in the summers, when we would go, there was a tossup between whether we would go to visit my dad's relatives or my mom's relatives. They were both interesting people, but of course, I really liked to go to my dad's relatives, where Grandma Cox was, because she lived on a farm. Visiting a farm in the summer for a kid was a lot of fun. WE: How did your mom and dad meet? RC: That I've never quite been sure. I heard these stories, and of course as a kid, I just never quite let them sink in. But I think they were in school together. They both went to schools which taught them to be teachers. Mother was an elementary school teacher, and Dad taught high school, general science and math and algebra. There were various little towns around the state where they taught for a while, but in the height of the Depression, my dad found out that there was a job opening at the high school in Albert Lea. I don't imagine he'd've called in the 1930s, but rather than write, he drove down there from Pine River to apply for the job, and the superintendent was so impressed by his zeal that they hired him. WE: Now, what about your mom's family? Evidently, they lived in town. Were they first or second generation? RC: Let's see. My mom's father came over from Norway, so she would have been first generation. WE: You're second generation. What about on your dad's side? RC: Dad's ancestors came here a long time earlier than that. One of our ancestors on that side is supposed to have been a quartermaster in the Revolutionary War, whatever that means. WE: Well, that means 1776, doesn't it? Now, your dad's parents were farmers. What about your mom's parents? What did they do? RC: Her dad was a section foreman on the Northern Pacific Railway. WE: That's a good job. RC: It was, yes. In fact, because he was working for the railroad, they were supplied with housing, and the house they lived in and that Mom grew up in was supplied to them by the railroad. I still have a photograph of that house. It's no longer standing, of course, but it's in there by the railroad tracks. My guess is that my grandfather went out every day as section foreman, meaning you check the tracks, you check the area to be sure that everything is working fine. WE: My wife's father did that, here in Northfield. She tells me about it. She says she remembers, as a kid, riding—what do you call that cart that sits on the track and you push the handles up and down? RC: Handcar or something. I know what you mean, but I'm not sure. WE: A putt-putt? Did we call them putt-putts? RC: We might have. WE: I don't know. Anyhow, nowadays, can you imagine taking a little five-year-old kid and putting them on this little putt-putt thing and going up and down the tracks? OSHA and every lawyer in town would be there watching. In 1936, you're born in Albert Lea, and of course, when you think of Albert Lea, the firs thing you think of is their meat plant there. RC: Right, Wilson. WE: Wilson. And athletics too. Did you live in town, in Albert Lea? RC: We lived in town. We lived in three different houses, none of which are still standing, the way things change. The house I remember the most was on the corner of Park Avenue and Fountain Street. It was a big Victorian-type house. Actually, it was a duplex, because we rented to people who lived on the second floor. As a kid, I can remember, it was only when the people were on vacation or we were between borders that we could ever get up into the attic, because the attic was only accessible from that duplex apartment. WE: The only time that you could make noise and scream. RC: That's right. WE: How many siblings do you have? RC: One. WE: And who would that be? RC: That would be my brother Jim. WE: Is he younger or older? RC: He's younger than I am. WE: Is he still living? RC: Yes, he is. He still lives in Albert Lea. WE: Oh, really? Okay. So, the first few years of your life, you lived in this big old house that you remember, and then you get to start school in about '41, '42. Now, as a five-year-old, do you recall Pearl Harbor? RC: I really don't. I can remember more about the war as it went on. My first conscious memories are about 1943, and I date this from some of the earliest comic books that I still have, and listening to news about the war on the radio, because I was a great radio listener. I can even remember—now, of course, this would have been fictional—but there was a radio serial called “Hop Harrigan,” about a pilot. He was Ace of the Airways. I swear—I have not heard it, of course, in sixty years or more, but there was a storyline in which he was the one who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, or at least as I remember it from all those years, he was carrying an atom bomb on there. I wish I could find that episode someplace. WE: This is going to be fun, talking about radio. I'm going to take a break, because this is radio, and while I'm taking this break, if you could kind of think about some of the radio shows you remember as a kid, because that's always, fun to go down Memory Lane. We're talking to Randy Cox, former librarian at St. Olaf and a collector of dime novels and a writer and everything else. [Commercial 21:21 to 23:12] WE: “Managua, Nicaragua!” You remember that? RC: That's right, I do remember that. WE: We're talking to a fellow named Randy Cox, a retired librarian from St. Olaf College, a longtime Northfield resident, and a dime novel collector and a writer of his own sort. When we left, we were talking about remembering radio shows. How many can you rattle off that you remember? And by the way, tell us about how you listened to the radio. They didn't have Walkmans and all that. RC: No. We had, I remember, two radios in the house. There was one in the kitchen, a little small radio which was in the corner, on the counter. When I came home from school, for lunch— See, the grade school and the high school that I went to was within walking distance of our house, and so I came home for lunch. No buses. I've never ridden on a school bus, at least to go to school. I'd come home there and my mother would be listening to programs like Helen Trent, “The Romance of Helen Trent,” and “Our Gal Sunday” and various other soap operas. One of the ones I remember, for a while there, there was a fifteen-minute, five-day-a-week serial based on Perry Mason, and these were very much like the Perry Masons you recall from television, with Raymond Burr, in many ways. But they dragged out the background storyline for weeks and weeks there. The best parts, of course, were the courtroom scenes. I can remember listening to that. Of course, there was a small radio in my bedroom, near my bed, so I could listen there. But the one I remember the most is a big floor-model radio, which was also a combination phonograph, so you could play records in there. You could open up the lid and then play records there, and then the knobs were inside and you'd listen to the radio. And I would lie on the floor in front of that radio and listen to programs like “Fibber McGee and Molly” and “The Shadow.” WE: Oh, when they opened that door? RC: Yes, yes, the famous closet. “Well, I probably stored it in the hall closet here.” “No, McGee, don't go there!” And they'd open the door, and then the sound men would just go crazy. But George Burns and Gracie Allen, and I said Fibber McGee and Molly, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. I was a great fan of the mystery shows like “The Shadow” and “Nick Carter.” WE: Let me do it. [Quotes] “Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men? The Shadow does. NBC now presents....” RC: Well, it was “the hearts of men,” actually, not just the minds, but you're right there, because of course, what you're thinking of is the fact that the Shadow was never seen, because he could cloud the minds of others so that they could not see him. WE: Oh, so it's “who lurks in the hearts of men”? RC: Yes, “who lurks in the hearts of men,” and “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay. The Shadow knows.” And then that creepy laughter. [Both imitate creepy laughter] WE: Do you remember something called “The Fat Man”? RC: Yes, I do. WE: Tell me about that, because a lot of people don't remember that. RC: The character, he was a private detective, and his name was Brad Runyon. He was played by an actor who actually was heavyset, named J. Scott Smart. The thing was that the Fat Man was a character created by Dashiell Hammett, who had written a novel many years before called The Thin Man. “The Thin Man” was a series on the radio as well. WE: I always think of Boston Blackie when you say “The Thin Man,” I don't know why. RC: Well, Boston Blackie was in the same genre as these. Boston Blackie was the guy who was sort of a little bit on both sides of the law. He was—how did the phrase go?—“friend to those who have no friends, enemy to those who make him their enemy.” He was pretty much a crook who still managed to solve crimes and so forth. WE: Did he have a girlfriend? RC: He had a girlfriend, and I'm trying to remember. I should be able to remember these, because one of the things I do when I'm on trips, when I'm driving anywhere, is to take a bunch of cassettes along, with old radio shows, because one of the other things I collect is what's called “Old-Time Radio,” the actual recordings of some of these old shows. A couple of summers ago, I chose a selection of detective shows, and I remember listening to some Boston Blackie episodes on that, but for the life of me, the name does not come to me. WE: “The Fat Man,” let's get back to that. Do you remember the opening for that? I remember. RC: Yes, because it was very distinctive. The announcer would say that somebody was coming through the door, stepping on the scale, weight: two hundred and forty-eight pounds. He'd gotten his card—you know the old fortune-telling machines, weighing machines, and he'd gotten his card—“Weight: two hundred and forty-eight pounds. Fortune: danger. Who is it? The Fat Man.” WE: Then, of course, they had the sound effect of the penny dropping into the scale. RC: You know, I haven't heard that show for years. I think there still are some that exist. There was a movie made based on it, with the same actor who played the part. I can remember seeing that. Of course, I always went to the movies if they were based on some character that I recognized. WE: I always thought Roderick Crawford was involved, but I don't think he was. RC: He may have been, because there were a lot of movie actors who also had careers on radio. WE: Well, he was just a fat detective, so that's why I probably thought he was the Fat Man. And of course, “The Lone Ranger.” RC: Yes! WE: You could visualize that. RC: If I were to be asked my favorite radio show, it probably would have been “The Lone Ranger.” There's just something about the whole concept that intrigued me. It was on three nights a week, too, half an hour shows, so you got plenty of adventure. WE: Lay on the floor, listen to that before going to bed. And you could visualize the dog, you could visualize the horse, Silver, and Tonto—what was Tonto's horse's name? RC: Tonto's horse's name was Scout. WE: Yes, that's right. And Bullet was the dog, wasn't he? RC: No, not in that show. You're thinking of “The Roy Rogers Show.” It was Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Pat Brady, Roy's horse Trigger, of course, and his dog Bullet. WE: Okay. Did the Lone Ranger have a dog? RC: The Lone Ranger did not have a dog. WE: No wonder I can't think of his name. So, what does “kemosabe” mean? RC: “Kemosabe” means “trusted friend.” As far as we know—anybody who's done any studying about this—the man who wrote most of the scripts for the Long Ranger show, whose name was Fran Striker, got this from a boys' camp in Michigan somewhere. It supposedly is an Indian phrase, and it's supposed to mean “trusted friend.” Well, of course, there have been a lot of jokes about what it really meant. The fact that the word “Tonto,” in some Indian languages, means “stupid” does not play very well. But if you listen to the shows carefully, the relationship between Tonto and the Lone Ranger was a very important one. The Lone Ranger never talked down to Tonto. The actor, of course, spoke broken English—what did they know in those days? But there was never any patronizing and so forth. And Tonto just as often would get the Lone Ranger out of trouble that he would fall into. WE: We're talking to Randy Cox, former librarian at St. Olaf College, also a dime novel collector and a writer in his own sorts, and obviously a historian on some broadcasting. This is kind of exciting. Have you ever been up to the Museum of Broadcasting in St. Louis Park? RC: Yes, I have. WE: Oh, good! What did you think of that? RC: I thought it was fascinating, because there, of course—you're thinking of the Pavek Museum? WE: I was Chairman of the Board for seven years. I'm on their board right now. RC: Really? Okay. Because of course, they have all of the old equipment that they used to have. It's just wonderful. WE: Isn't it amazing? You know, you have a wealth of a collection that we might want to look at, in regards to your collection of old radio shows, because we do collect that. You know what the most popular thing is up there right now, for people to look at? RC: I don't know. What would it be? WE: The old “Howdy Doody” shows, and “Axel and His Dog.” RC: Really? I see. WE: What's your opinion of Arthur Godfrey? RC: Arthur Godfrey was someone I listened to regularly myself, and I think it probably got started because my parents tuned him in. At one point, I discovered that you could listen to him twice a day. He was on CBS, which would have meant WCCO, out of Minneapolis. But there were other stations around which played it later on in the day. WE: KATE? RC: KATE was Albert Lea's station, and that was the ABC station. The other one that I listened to— WE: KAUS? Out of Austin? RC: Austin, KAUS, you're correct, I listened to that once in a while. But the ones that I remember the most are WCCO for CBS, KATE for ABC, WHO in Des Moines, Iowa was the NBC station, and WGN out of Chicago was the Mutual Broadcasting station. And those four stations gave me all of all the adventure shows, all the radio shows. “The Shadow” was out of Mutual. In fact, they had this block of mystery shows on Sunday afternoon, and “The Shadow” was scheduled so that we would have heard it at four o' clock Sunday afternoon here. But of course on the East Coast, where it was being broadcast, it was at five o' clock, so you could make jokes about, “Oh, you're the five o' clock Shadow,” which of course was a line from an ad for razor blades. If you had the five o' clock shadow, you needed a Gillette razor blade. WE: Now, do you remember a commercial from that era? RC: Yes, I do remember a lot of the commercials. WE: Do you remember [sings; RC joins], “Use Wildwood [?] cooking oil, Charlie.” RC: It's interesting we should mention that one, because that was the sponsor for another detective show which was based on a Dashiell Hammett character, “The Adventures of Sam Spade,” because Sam Spade, who was the character in The Maltese Falcon, went on to be a long-running series character on radio. WE: You might be the guy that can help me on this one—thank you for “The Fat Man,” by the way, that isn't a figment of my imagination—how about [sings] “L, A, V, A, bum bum-bum?” Remember who they sponsored? RC: “The FBI in Peace and War.” WE: Yes! [Laughs] Wow, you're an expert on this stuff. RC: Well, this is probably how I got into being interested in mysteries, was listening to the radio. People say, “How did you ever get interested in detective stories?” And I say, “Well, I listened to the radio a lot.” Besides “The Shadow” and “Nick Carter,” there were shows like “The FBI in Peace and War,” “David Harding, Counterspy,” and one called “The House of Mystery,” which was a fifteen-minute, five-day-a-week show, mostly for kids, but it always started out by saying, [quotes] “Welcome to the House of Mystery.” And that sort of thing just fascinated me. In fact, I was listening to that when the announcement came over the radio that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died. I think it was about a Wednesday afternoon, or something like that, and the announcement came, and that meant, that of course, they took all the shows off the air to play memorial programs and music and so forth. Each week's batch of episodes of “The House of Mystery” was a complete story, and it was continued from day to day, and I swear, I never did find out how that one story ended. But I remember going out to the kitchen, and my mother asking me, “What happened? Why aren't you listening to the radio?” “Oh, some guy died.” Now, I knew darned well who Franklin Delano Roosevelt was, because I can remember listening to— WE: Fireside chats. RC: I may heard to the fireside chats, I have no conscious memory of them. I've heard recordings of them since. But I can remember listening to some of the election when he ran against Dewey. These are the little bits in my mind that come back, you mentioned earlier, the things that pop up, we don't even know where they come from. WE: Remember the “Rinso White” commercial? RC: “Rinso White,” yes. [Sings] “Happy little washday song....” WE: Yes, and then [sings], “Brylcreem, a little dab'll do ya, Brylcreem, you look so debonair.” RC: [Laughs] That's right, yes. WE: We're talking to Randy Cox from St. Olaf College, retired librarian, a writer, and by the way, an expert, by many people's opinion, of Sherlock Holmes. We'll be back with more in just a moment. [Commercial 38:55 to 42:04] WE: Old-time radio, little bit politically incorrect, huh? RC: That's right. WE: Arthur Godfrey on KYMN Radio. It's twelve minutes before ten o' clock on the Wayne Eddy Affair, on KYMN, out of Northfield, Minnesota. My guest this morning is a gentleman by the name of Randy Cox. He is a former librarian at St. Olaf College, an expert in Sherlock Holmes and a dime novel collector and a script writer. We haven't even got you in school yet, and we're almost done with this hour. This is fun. I didn't know you had all this rich background in broadcasting. Of course, for me, it's really fascinating. You're just a little bit older than I am, and I do remember most of these programs that you're mentioning, and then into the rock and roll era, and then into talk radio. It's kind of fascinating. I'm enjoying it a lot. KATE, great radio station out of Albert Lea. So, you went to grade school, you came home from lunch every day, your mom's listening to the soap operas, you'd have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or soup, or leftovers from the supper? RC: You know, I don't really remember. I just remember that they were always good. WE: Was your mom a stay-at-home mom? RC: Yes, although at first, she was a substitute teacher in the elementary schools in Albert Lea. But then, particularly after I was born and my brother was born, she was at home and looked after us. Dad was the one who would go off to work every day, first up to the high school, where he taught. I can still remember seeing him leave the house and go down the sidewalk and cross the street and walk to school. I can remember watching for him when he came home at the end of the day. But after a while, he switched from being a schoolteacher to working in the post office. WE: What subject did he teach in school? RC: He taught mostly in the sciences. I know he was an algebra teacher—he had a regular class in algebra—but I think he taught general science before that. And he was a basketball coach as well, so I have a fondness for basketball based on that memory. In fact, I remember, when my brother and I got into high school, my dad was still teaching there, and he said that one of the things he did not want was to have either of us enrolled in his algebra class. He thought it was just going to be too uncomfortable for him be teaching his own kids that way. I think by the time we were in high school, he had switched over to working first as a clerk in the post office and then as a postal supervisor. WE: Being a five-year-old during the Second World War, when that started in '41 and ended in '45, in those four years, do you remember coupons, or chicken instead of beef, and all of that? Victory gardens? RC: Yes, I can remember some of that. I read about it. There were some things that we just could not have or do. I remember we hung on to our old DeSoto for years and years, until after the end of the war. One of the best cars we ever had. But anyways, yes, I can remember some of the sacrifices that we made for that. Always be reminded that it was very unusual if you got toys that were made out of metal, because during the war, of course, metal went into the scrap drive for the war effort. Everything was made of cardboard. I'll be darned, though—some of those companies were very ingenious in the sorts of things that they used cardboard and paper paste board and so forth for. I still have some old toys, little cars, that are made out of that substance. Didn't bother me. They were still fun to play with. WE: Did you ever make a scooter out of an orange crate cart and a roller skate? RC: No, I never did. But I do remember thinking about the war. One of the things was that there were a lot of premiums and advertisements and things that you got on the backs of breakfast cereals that related to the war, like little airplanes. You could cut these out and put them together, and then supposedly paste a penny on the nose of it, and that would give it enough weight so that you could throw it like a glider. I don't remember if I ever got mine to work very well. But I do remember making model airplanes out of balsa wood. WE: Do you remember sending in for things out of the backs of comic books, the code rings and things like that? Waiting by the mailbox for them? RC: Yes, yes. Most of the ones I did were based on things on the radio. One of my favorite radio serials was “Captain Midnight.” Here was a World War II ace—actually, the story goes back that he was in World War I, and that's how he got his name, Captain Midnight, because he arrived on the scene in the very first episode at the stroke of midnight, so General Steele said, “To me, he will always be Captain Midnight.” And so he was Captain Midnight for the rest of the series. Every so often, they would have a story that would involve a device. You knew darn well after a while that they were going to work up to something that you could send away for. And it always worked into the story. The Jack Armstrong series—“Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy”—did very much the same thing with Wheaties. The sponsor of Captain Midnight was Ovaltine. WE: Hot Ovaltine. RC: Hot Ovaltine. You'd buy the stuff, and I think you took the little seal from inside the lid, cut that out, and you put that in an envelope with a dime taped to it and instructions on what you were sending for. But every year they had a new Code-O-Graph, because Captain Midnight was in charge of a sort of semi-military organization known as the Secret Squadron, which at first was known by the initials SS, until somebody noticed that this also was used by the Nazis, so they changed it to something, I think SQ, something like that. They used to worry about things like that in those days. But anyway, he communicated with the members of the Secret Squadron by ingenious codes which had to be changed every year. They were fairly simple substitution codes with little dials on the devices, so that you'd set it for code A-12, and then you read your numbers around the dial and saw the letters opposite them, and that would spell out a message. At the end of each episode, there would be a message by the announcer, P.R. Andreas [?], for instance, “Okay, get out your new 1946 Code-O-Graph, set it for this,” and then he'd read off the numbers, and then when he was done, he'd say, “Okay, decode that, and you'll know what the message is for today.” WE: One of the things that it interesting is that today—they write about it all the time—immediate gratification, and in those days, one of the things that was fun and exciting—before I take a break here—was to send that off, and then wait for it, and wait for it. “Did it come in the mail today?” Just getting mail was cool. RC: From my bedroom, I could look through a window where I could see the front porch and the mail slot. If I stood up on a chair and I looked out through that window, I could see when the mail came, and it would fall through that slot, and I could spot these manila envelopes that these premiums appeared in, and run like crazy to the front door to get my premiums. WE: Some nice memories going on right now, huh? It's four minutes before ten o' clock. We're going to take a little break here. [Commercial 51:09 to 53:09] WE: That's what I want, epicurean. What does that mean, “epicurean” truffles? Chocolate on the skin? It's one minute, forty-five seconds before we take a break for CNN News on KYMN Radio. My guest this morning, a very interesting individual, his name, Randy Cox, former librarian at St. Olaf College, and a collector of dime novels, a writer himself, and a fan of broadcasting, radio. RC: Old-time radio. WE: You know, I'm just really taken aback. I'm so happy that you went up to the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting. You know, Pavek is a gentleman that made a great contribution that started the museum. Sometimes we wonder whether marketing would be better if we said, “Museum of Broadcasting,” without the “Pavek,” because what does that mean to people outside the thing? But we owe him. Did you know what the first recorded broadcast show was, where they recorded it and then played it back over the network? RC: No, I don't think I do. WE: You probably saw the machine while you were up there. Bing Crosby. RC: Of course. WE: He got a machine from Germany, and we have that original machine at the Pavek. He was the very first person to record his entire show and have it played on tape rather than live. They did a live audience, but then they played it back. It just was marvelous for the industry, because then they could get shows done. Before, it was all live. “Boy, you better be there.” We're going to take a break for the news, and then we're going to come back, and we'll try to get you into high school. RC: [Laughs] All right. WE: I've got to know now, it can't wait: did you play basketball? RC: No, I didn't. WE: But you can watch it and enjoy it, because you know what it's about. All right. This is KYMN Radio, from Northfield, Minnesota, the home of cows, colleges, and contentment, and dime novel collectors. [Transcribed 2015 by Emilee Martell for the Northfield Historical Society]

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Randy Cox Narrator Wayne Eddy Interviewer February 14, 2007 The Wayne Eddy Affair KYMN Radio WE: Well, thank you and good morning. I just learned that Tom Furlong's General Motor Superstore is now a sponsor on the Wayne Eddy Affair, five days a week. Thank you, Tom, and I sure do appreciate that. Today is February 14th, 2007, Valentine's Day. My wife has been out of town since Monday, so we're going to meet tonight and enjoy Valentine's Day—although we swore we're not going to buy each other gifts or anything like that, just make it normal. However, I did go shop at Anna's Closet, and I did get her something, I can't just resist that. We have a great lineup of people coming into our studio each and every day, Monday through Friday, on the Wayne Eddy Affair. I've asked you to call me and let me know of people you know that are interesting, that you think would be a good interview on the Wayne Eddy Affair. I got a call from Mr. Johnson over at the Conoco station here in town, and he mentioned an individual by the name of Cox, first name.... RC: Randolph. WE: Randolph. Do you like Randolph or Randy? RC: Randy, actually. WE: Randy Cox. So I'm going, “I don't know who this guy is.” He says, “He's a former librarian at St. Olaf College.” RC: That's right. WE: And that you're an expert on Sherlock Holmes. RC: Well, I know quite a bit about Sherlock Holmes. WE: And that you write dime novels. RC: Well, I don't write them, but I do read them, and I edit a little magazine called Dime Novel Roundup, for people who collect them. See, dime novels are the nineteenth century's paperbacks. WE: Right. The Old West. RC: The Old West is part of the theme, yes, and of course, Jesse James appeared in quite a number of dime novels. WE: Did you do something for the James Younger Gang? Any research on dime novels? RC: Well, I helped to mount an exhibit at the Northfield Arts Guild many years ago. They were doing “Jesse James in Popular Culture,” and I supplied covers for some of the dime novels that Jesse James had appeared in. I think they filmed it for local-access television, and every once in a while, somebody would tell me that they had seen me on television and I'd say, “What?,” because I don't have cable, so I didn't get the program. WE: Do you live out in the country? RC: Yes, I'm in rural Northfield, just outside the city limits of Dundas. WE: By the way, folks, if you're wondering what's going on here, a lot of people will dial across their radios, and if they hear a couple of people talking, they kind of eavesdrop. And that's what this show is all about. This is a small-town radio station in Northfield, Minnesota, where our studios are right on the main street, called Division Street, just south of Second Street. The Cannon River is behind us. We have this big picture window that faces the street, people walk by, we say hi. It's just a lot of fun. When I came in this morning, you were already here. We call it the Green Room. Of course, it's not green. RC: Old theatrical term. WE: Anyhow, I introduced myself to you, and I said, “This can be interesting, I'm going to be talking to you and I don't believe I've ever had the pleasure of meeting you before.” And you said, “Ah, but we have.” RC: Yes, we have, because about twenty years ago, there was a fundraiser for the Northfield Arts Guild. It was at the time of the popularity of the Agatha Christie movie Murder on the Orient Express, so we had the Murder on the Northfield Express. I wrote the script for that little mystery. I have no memory of just exactly what happened, except a couple of points in it. At one point, it all seemed to be chaos. The mystery was laid out and people were making guesses as to what the solution was and picking up on the clues and things like that, and I still remember, you came along and asked me, “Well, is it going as well as you anticipated?” And I sort of paused for a minute and I said, “Yes, I think it is. In fact, I think it's going better than I anticipated.” WE: Isn't it funny how you remember little things like that? Like, why would you remember I asked that question? I think I had a roll in that script. RC: I believe you did. WE: And I think a gal named Kay Brown was the Arts Guild Director at that time, and she went on to become a legislator for one term. And Dan Freeman, of course, was involved. I can't recall everything, but I do remember you gave us instructions: stick to the script, and if they ask the right questions, you've got to be honest with them. But you can mislead them in other ways. RC: Yes. Everyone had a role to play, and they had certain characteristics. If you stuck within that, I think you were safe. You couldn't consciously mislead them, but just don't give them too much information. I still remember the ending of it, when I gave the solution, and there were people who were, let we say, not terribly thrilled with the way things worked out, because they had guessed a different villain. In fact, I don't think any of the participants even knew who the villain was until we got to that point. WE: That was the fun part of it, because I could have been the villain and not known it. RC: Oh, I know—I think it was Charlie Black who turned out to be the villain. And did he ever chew up the scenery in his final scene there! WE: Charlie Black, there's a guy I've got to get on the air too. He's been around a long, long time. And we are just having a good time right now, Randy Cox is our guest on KYMN Radio. [Commercial 7:14 to 8:42] WE: My guest this morning is Randy Cox, and to give a better description of Randy: are you retired now? RC: Yes, I am retired. WE: From St. Olaf College. RC: From St. Olaf College. WE: As the head librarian. RC: No, I was never the head librarian, but I was a reference librarian. WE: Now, you can get a doctor's degree in Library Science. RC: Yes, you can. I don't know how many people do that. In fact, I only remember one person who went back to library school and got a Ph. D in it. Mostly that will put you into the administrative field, or teaching the field. I was satisfied with a master's degree, which is the terminal degree for Library Science, although I did go back to the university at one time. One of my other interests is Scandinavian Studies. WE: Oh my gosh. RC: Up at St. Olaf, of course, that kind of an interest can get you a little ways along. When I was in library school, I guess I was a little uncertain about whether I wanted to be a librarian at that point. I went over to the Scandinavian Studies department there and talked to a man named Marion Nelson about what it would take for me to switch to a Scandinavian major, a Norwegian major, in graduate school. And that's the first time I heard the phrase, “Though the supply is small, the demand is still smaller.” So I went back to being a librarian, but it's always stuck in the back of my mind. I'd liked to have pursued some studies in that area. So, a number of years ago, I went back to the university and worked on a second master's degree—which, after a while, I decided really wasn't for me after all. But that's just one of my other interests. WE: Now, as a librarian, I'm sure that you work with other colleges and universities in the state and particularly in the metro area. Are you familiar with the St. Thomas O'Shaughnessy Library? RC: I know of it. I've never been there. But I do know that it's a very fine library. WE: I've said on this show before, there's always a connection between my guests, somehow, some way, you connect. We already connected because we got together twenty-some years ago. But I had an uncle that was the head librarian, and had a degree in Library Science, that actually opened the O'Shaughnessy Library back in the fifties. I remember having to carry the books from one location all the way across campus to another location. So every time I'd drive by there, I'd say, “I put those books in there.” And it just popped in my mind: is the Dewey Decimal system still functional? RC: It's still functional, but there are more and more libraries who seem to be going to the Library of Congress system, which is a little more flexible, I think, a combination of letters and numbers rather than just numbers. But when you mentioned carrying the books at St. Thomas, that, of course, is a famous story at St. Olaf. When the school opened, or shortly after it opened, the first library was in Steensland Hall. WE: Why don't you tell us where that is, physically, to Old Main? RC: It's very near Old Main. In fact, it's the first building right next to Old Main on the campus. But when they built Rolvaag Library and opened it in the 1940s, they carried the books from Steensland across campus to Rolvaag Library. There are some people who were students there at the time who remember that. By the time we did the renovation of Rolvaag Library into the facility that it is today, you couldn't do that any more, because there were too many caveats about the use of help and damaging books and things like that. WE: The lawyers would be watching. RC: The lawyers would be watching, yes. WE: [Laughs] Child labor or minimum wage or stubbing your toe. Well, it's eighteen minutes after nine o'clock on the Wayne Eddy Affair on KYMN Radio, and Randy Cox is my guest on KYMN. Randy, let's start finding out all about you. First of all, when were you born? RC: I was born in 1936. WE: 1936. Where would that have been? RC: That would have been in Albert Lea, Minnesota. WE: Oh, my goodness, Albert Lea, okay. How long did you live there? RC: I spent most of my time there until I went off to college, in 1955. Then I was away from Albert Lea most of the time. I've been in Northfield since 1962. WE: Oh, you're an old-timer. What about your mom and dad? Let's talk about your mom. What was her maiden name? RC: My mother's maiden name was Onsum. WE: Sounds like a Norwegian name. RC: Yes, she was both Norwegian and Swedish. Came from northern Minnesota, grew up in a little town called Glyndon. WE: I've heard of that, for some reason. RC: We had relatives up in that area. In fact, my father's relatives were in northern Minnesota, a little further east, in Pine River. I remember in the summers, when we would go, there was a tossup between whether we would go to visit my dad's relatives or my mom's relatives. They were both interesting people, but of course, I really liked to go to my dad's relatives, where Grandma Cox was, because she lived on a farm. Visiting a farm in the summer for a kid was a lot of fun. WE: How did your mom and dad meet? RC: That I've never quite been sure. I heard these stories, and of course as a kid, I just never quite let them sink in. But I think they were in school together. They both went to schools which taught them to be teachers. Mother was an elementary school teacher, and Dad taught high school, general science and math and algebra. There were various little towns around the state where they taught for a while, but in the height of the Depression, my dad found out that there was a job opening at the high school in Albert Lea. I don't imagine he'd've called in the 1930s, but rather than write, he drove down there from Pine River to apply for the job, and the superintendent was so impressed by his zeal that they hired him. WE: Now, what about your mom's family? Evidently, they lived in town. Were they first or second generation? RC: Let's see. My mom's father came over from Norway, so she would have been first generation. WE: You're second generation. What about on your dad's side? RC: Dad's ancestors came here a long time earlier than that. One of our ancestors on that side is supposed to have been a quartermaster in the Revolutionary War, whatever that means. WE: Well, that means 1776, doesn't it? Now, your dad's parents were farmers. What about your mom's parents? What did they do? RC: Her dad was a section foreman on the Northern Pacific Railway. WE: That's a good job. RC: It was, yes. In fact, because he was working for the railroad, they were supplied with housing, and the house they lived in and that Mom grew up in was supplied to them by the railroad. I still have a photograph of that house. It's no longer standing, of course, but it's in there by the railroad tracks. My guess is that my grandfather went out every day as section foreman, meaning you check the tracks, you check the area to be sure that everything is working fine. WE: My wife's father did that, here in Northfield. She tells me about it. She says she remembers, as a kid, riding—what do you call that cart that sits on the track and you push the handles up and down? RC: Handcar or something. I know what you mean, but I'm not sure. WE: A putt-putt? Did we call them putt-putts? RC: We might have. WE: I don't know. Anyhow, nowadays, can you imagine taking a little five-year-old kid and putting them on this little putt-putt thing and going up and down the tracks? OSHA and every lawyer in town would be there watching. In 1936, you're born in Albert Lea, and of course, when you think of Albert Lea, the firs thing you think of is their meat plant there. RC: Right, Wilson. WE: Wilson. And athletics too. Did you live in town, in Albert Lea? RC: We lived in town. We lived in three different houses, none of which are still standing, the way things change. The house I remember the most was on the corner of Park Avenue and Fountain Street. It was a big Victorian-type house. Actually, it was a duplex, because we rented to people who lived on the second floor. As a kid, I can remember, it was only when the people were on vacation or we were between borders that we could ever get up into the attic, because the attic was only accessible from that duplex apartment. WE: The only time that you could make noise and scream. RC: That's right. WE: How many siblings do you have? RC: One. WE: And who would that be? RC: That would be my brother Jim. WE: Is he younger or older? RC: He's younger than I am. WE: Is he still living? RC: Yes, he is. He still lives in Albert Lea. WE: Oh, really? Okay. So, the first few years of your life, you lived in this big old house that you remember, and then you get to start school in about '41, '42. Now, as a five-year-old, do you recall Pearl Harbor? RC: I really don't. I can remember more about the war as it went on. My first conscious memories are about 1943, and I date this from some of the earliest comic books that I still have, and listening to news about the war on the radio, because I was a great radio listener. I can even remember—now, of course, this would have been fictional—but there was a radio serial called “Hop Harrigan,” about a pilot. He was Ace of the Airways. I swear—I have not heard it, of course, in sixty years or more, but there was a storyline in which he was the one who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, or at least as I remember it from all those years, he was carrying an atom bomb on there. I wish I could find that episode someplace. WE: This is going to be fun, talking about radio. I'm going to take a break, because this is radio, and while I'm taking this break, if you could kind of think about some of the radio shows you remember as a kid, because that's always, fun to go down Memory Lane. We're talking to Randy Cox, former librarian at St. Olaf and a collector of dime novels and a writer and everything else. [Commercial 21:21 to 23:12] WE: “Managua, Nicaragua!” You remember that? RC: That's right, I do remember that. WE: We're talking to a fellow named Randy Cox, a retired librarian from St. Olaf College, a longtime Northfield resident, and a dime novel collector and a writer of his own sort. When we left, we were talking about remembering radio shows. How many can you rattle off that you remember? And by the way, tell us about how you listened to the radio. They didn't have Walkmans and all that. RC: No. We had, I remember, two radios in the house. There was one in the kitchen, a little small radio which was in the corner, on the counter. When I came home from school, for lunch— See, the grade school and the high school that I went to was within walking distance of our house, and so I came home for lunch. No buses. I've never ridden on a school bus, at least to go to school. I'd come home there and my mother would be listening to programs like Helen Trent, “The Romance of Helen Trent,” and “Our Gal Sunday” and various other soap operas. One of the ones I remember, for a while there, there was a fifteen-minute, five-day-a-week serial based on Perry Mason, and these were very much like the Perry Masons you recall from television, with Raymond Burr, in many ways. But they dragged out the background storyline for weeks and weeks there. The best parts, of course, were the courtroom scenes. I can remember listening to that. Of course, there was a small radio in my bedroom, near my bed, so I could listen there. But the one I remember the most is a big floor-model radio, which was also a combination phonograph, so you could play records in there. You could open up the lid and then play records there, and then the knobs were inside and you'd listen to the radio. And I would lie on the floor in front of that radio and listen to programs like “Fibber McGee and Molly” and “The Shadow.” WE: Oh, when they opened that door? RC: Yes, yes, the famous closet. “Well, I probably stored it in the hall closet here.” “No, McGee, don't go there!” And they'd open the door, and then the sound men would just go crazy. But George Burns and Gracie Allen, and I said Fibber McGee and Molly, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. I was a great fan of the mystery shows like “The Shadow” and “Nick Carter.” WE: Let me do it. [Quotes] “Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men? The Shadow does. NBC now presents....” RC: Well, it was “the hearts of men,” actually, not just the minds, but you're right there, because of course, what you're thinking of is the fact that the Shadow was never seen, because he could cloud the minds of others so that they could not see him. WE: Oh, so it's “who lurks in the hearts of men”? RC: Yes, “who lurks in the hearts of men,” and “The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. Crime does not pay. The Shadow knows.” And then that creepy laughter. [Both imitate creepy laughter] WE: Do you remember something called “The Fat Man”? RC: Yes, I do. WE: Tell me about that, because a lot of people don't remember that. RC: The character, he was a private detective, and his name was Brad Runyon. He was played by an actor who actually was heavyset, named J. Scott Smart. The thing was that the Fat Man was a character created by Dashiell Hammett, who had written a novel many years before called The Thin Man. “The Thin Man” was a series on the radio as well. WE: I always think of Boston Blackie when you say “The Thin Man,” I don't know why. RC: Well, Boston Blackie was in the same genre as these. Boston Blackie was the guy who was sort of a little bit on both sides of the law. He was—how did the phrase go?—“friend to those who have no friends, enemy to those who make him their enemy.” He was pretty much a crook who still managed to solve crimes and so forth. WE: Did he have a girlfriend? RC: He had a girlfriend, and I'm trying to remember. I should be able to remember these, because one of the things I do when I'm on trips, when I'm driving anywhere, is to take a bunch of cassettes along, with old radio shows, because one of the other things I collect is what's called “Old-Time Radio,” the actual recordings of some of these old shows. A couple of summers ago, I chose a selection of detective shows, and I remember listening to some Boston Blackie episodes on that, but for the life of me, the name does not come to me. WE: “The Fat Man,” let's get back to that. Do you remember the opening for that? I remember. RC: Yes, because it was very distinctive. The announcer would say that somebody was coming through the door, stepping on the scale, weight: two hundred and forty-eight pounds. He'd gotten his card—you know the old fortune-telling machines, weighing machines, and he'd gotten his card—“Weight: two hundred and forty-eight pounds. Fortune: danger. Who is it? The Fat Man.” WE: Then, of course, they had the sound effect of the penny dropping into the scale. RC: You know, I haven't heard that show for years. I think there still are some that exist. There was a movie made based on it, with the same actor who played the part. I can remember seeing that. Of course, I always went to the movies if they were based on some character that I recognized. WE: I always thought Roderick Crawford was involved, but I don't think he was. RC: He may have been, because there were a lot of movie actors who also had careers on radio. WE: Well, he was just a fat detective, so that's why I probably thought he was the Fat Man. And of course, “The Lone Ranger.” RC: Yes! WE: You could visualize that. RC: If I were to be asked my favorite radio show, it probably would have been “The Lone Ranger.” There's just something about the whole concept that intrigued me. It was on three nights a week, too, half an hour shows, so you got plenty of adventure. WE: Lay on the floor, listen to that before going to bed. And you could visualize the dog, you could visualize the horse, Silver, and Tonto—what was Tonto's horse's name? RC: Tonto's horse's name was Scout. WE: Yes, that's right. And Bullet was the dog, wasn't he? RC: No, not in that show. You're thinking of “The Roy Rogers Show.” It was Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Pat Brady, Roy's horse Trigger, of course, and his dog Bullet. WE: Okay. Did the Lone Ranger have a dog? RC: The Lone Ranger did not have a dog. WE: No wonder I can't think of his name. So, what does “kemosabe” mean? RC: “Kemosabe” means “trusted friend.” As far as we know—anybody who's done any studying about this—the man who wrote most of the scripts for the Long Ranger show, whose name was Fran Striker, got this from a boys' camp in Michigan somewhere. It supposedly is an Indian phrase, and it's supposed to mean “trusted friend.” Well, of course, there have been a lot of jokes about what it really meant. The fact that the word “Tonto,” in some Indian languages, means “stupid” does not play very well. But if you listen to the shows carefully, the relationship between Tonto and the Lone Ranger was a very important one. The Lone Ranger never talked down to Tonto. The actor, of course, spoke broken English—what did they know in those days? But there was never any patronizing and so forth. And Tonto just as often would get the Lone Ranger out of trouble that he would fall into. WE: We're talking to Randy Cox, former librarian at St. Olaf College, also a dime novel collector and a writer in his own sorts, and obviously a historian on some broadcasting. This is kind of exciting. Have you ever been up to the Museum of Broadcasting in St. Louis Park? RC: Yes, I have. WE: Oh, good! What did you think of that? RC: I thought it was fascinating, because there, of course—you're thinking of the Pavek Museum? WE: I was Chairman of the Board for seven years. I'm on their board right now. RC: Really? Okay. Because of course, they have all of the old equipment that they used to have. It's just wonderful. WE: Isn't it amazing? You know, you have a wealth of a collection that we might want to look at, in regards to your collection of old radio shows, because we do collect that. You know what the most popular thing is up there right now, for people to look at? RC: I don't know. What would it be? WE: The old “Howdy Doody” shows, and “Axel and His Dog.” RC: Really? I see. WE: What's your opinion of Arthur Godfrey? RC: Arthur Godfrey was someone I listened to regularly myself, and I think it probably got started because my parents tuned him in. At one point, I discovered that you could listen to him twice a day. He was on CBS, which would have meant WCCO, out of Minneapolis. But there were other stations around which played it later on in the day. WE: KATE? RC: KATE was Albert Lea's station, and that was the ABC station. The other one that I listened to— WE: KAUS? Out of Austin? RC: Austin, KAUS, you're correct, I listened to that once in a while. But the ones that I remember the most are WCCO for CBS, KATE for ABC, WHO in Des Moines, Iowa was the NBC station, and WGN out of Chicago was the Mutual Broadcasting station. And those four stations gave me all of all the adventure shows, all the radio shows. “The Shadow” was out of Mutual. In fact, they had this block of mystery shows on Sunday afternoon, and “The Shadow” was scheduled so that we would have heard it at four o' clock Sunday afternoon here. But of course on the East Coast, where it was being broadcast, it was at five o' clock, so you could make jokes about, “Oh, you're the five o' clock Shadow,” which of course was a line from an ad for razor blades. If you had the five o' clock shadow, you needed a Gillette razor blade. WE: Now, do you remember a commercial from that era? RC: Yes, I do remember a lot of the commercials. WE: Do you remember [sings; RC joins], “Use Wildwood [?] cooking oil, Charlie.” RC: It's interesting we should mention that one, because that was the sponsor for another detective show which was based on a Dashiell Hammett character, “The Adventures of Sam Spade,” because Sam Spade, who was the character in The Maltese Falcon, went on to be a long-running series character on radio. WE: You might be the guy that can help me on this one—thank you for “The Fat Man,” by the way, that isn't a figment of my imagination—how about [sings] “L, A, V, A, bum bum-bum?” Remember who they sponsored? RC: “The FBI in Peace and War.” WE: Yes! [Laughs] Wow, you're an expert on this stuff. RC: Well, this is probably how I got into being interested in mysteries, was listening to the radio. People say, “How did you ever get interested in detective stories?” And I say, “Well, I listened to the radio a lot.” Besides “The Shadow” and “Nick Carter,” there were shows like “The FBI in Peace and War,” “David Harding, Counterspy,” and one called “The House of Mystery,” which was a fifteen-minute, five-day-a-week show, mostly for kids, but it always started out by saying, [quotes] “Welcome to the House of Mystery.” And that sort of thing just fascinated me. In fact, I was listening to that when the announcement came over the radio that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died. I think it was about a Wednesday afternoon, or something like that, and the announcement came, and that meant, that of course, they took all the shows off the air to play memorial programs and music and so forth. Each week's batch of episodes of “The House of Mystery” was a complete story, and it was continued from day to day, and I swear, I never did find out how that one story ended. But I remember going out to the kitchen, and my mother asking me, “What happened? Why aren't you listening to the radio?” “Oh, some guy died.” Now, I knew darned well who Franklin Delano Roosevelt was, because I can remember listening to— WE: Fireside chats. RC: I may heard to the fireside chats, I have no conscious memory of them. I've heard recordings of them since. But I can remember listening to some of the election when he ran against Dewey. These are the little bits in my mind that come back, you mentioned earlier, the things that pop up, we don't even know where they come from. WE: Remember the “Rinso White” commercial? RC: “Rinso White,” yes. [Sings] “Happy little washday song....” WE: Yes, and then [sings], “Brylcreem, a little dab'll do ya, Brylcreem, you look so debonair.” RC: [Laughs] That's right, yes. WE: We're talking to Randy Cox from St. Olaf College, retired librarian, a writer, and by the way, an expert, by many people's opinion, of Sherlock Holmes. We'll be back with more in just a moment. [Commercial 38:55 to 42:04] WE: Old-time radio, little bit politically incorrect, huh? RC: That's right. WE: Arthur Godfrey on KYMN Radio. It's twelve minutes before ten o' clock on the Wayne Eddy Affair, on KYMN, out of Northfield, Minnesota. My guest this morning is a gentleman by the name of Randy Cox. He is a former librarian at St. Olaf College, an expert in Sherlock Holmes and a dime novel collector and a script writer. We haven't even got you in school yet, and we're almost done with this hour. This is fun. I didn't know you had all this rich background in broadcasting. Of course, for me, it's really fascinating. You're just a little bit older than I am, and I do remember most of these programs that you're mentioning, and then into the rock and roll era, and then into talk radio. It's kind of fascinating. I'm enjoying it a lot. KATE, great radio station out of Albert Lea. So, you went to grade school, you came home from lunch every day, your mom's listening to the soap operas, you'd have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, or soup, or leftovers from the supper? RC: You know, I don't really remember. I just remember that they were always good. WE: Was your mom a stay-at-home mom? RC: Yes, although at first, she was a substitute teacher in the elementary schools in Albert Lea. But then, particularly after I was born and my brother was born, she was at home and looked after us. Dad was the one who would go off to work every day, first up to the high school, where he taught. I can still remember seeing him leave the house and go down the sidewalk and cross the street and walk to school. I can remember watching for him when he came home at the end of the day. But after a while, he switched from being a schoolteacher to working in the post office. WE: What subject did he teach in school? RC: He taught mostly in the sciences. I know he was an algebra teacher—he had a regular class in algebra—but I think he taught general science before that. And he was a basketball coach as well, so I have a fondness for basketball based on that memory. In fact, I remember, when my brother and I got into high school, my dad was still teaching there, and he said that one of the things he did not want was to have either of us enrolled in his algebra class. He thought it was just going to be too uncomfortable for him be teaching his own kids that way. I think by the time we were in high school, he had switched over to working first as a clerk in the post office and then as a postal supervisor. WE: Being a five-year-old during the Second World War, when that started in '41 and ended in '45, in those four years, do you remember coupons, or chicken instead of beef, and all of that? Victory gardens? RC: Yes, I can remember some of that. I read about it. There were some things that we just could not have or do. I remember we hung on to our old DeSoto for years and years, until after the end of the war. One of the best cars we ever had. But anyways, yes, I can remember some of the sacrifices that we made for that. Always be reminded that it was very unusual if you got toys that were made out of metal, because during the war, of course, metal went into the scrap drive for the war effort. Everything was made of cardboard. I'll be darned, though—some of those companies were very ingenious in the sorts of things that they used cardboard and paper paste board and so forth for. I still have some old toys, little cars, that are made out of that substance. Didn't bother me. They were still fun to play with. WE: Did you ever make a scooter out of an orange crate cart and a roller skate? RC: No, I never did. But I do remember thinking about the war. One of the things was that there were a lot of premiums and advertisements and things that you got on the backs of breakfast cereals that related to the war, like little airplanes. You could cut these out and put them together, and then supposedly paste a penny on the nose of it, and that would give it enough weight so that you could throw it like a glider. I don't remember if I ever got mine to work very well. But I do remember making model airplanes out of balsa wood. WE: Do you remember sending in for things out of the backs of comic books, the code rings and things like that? Waiting by the mailbox for them? RC: Yes, yes. Most of the ones I did were based on things on the radio. One of my favorite radio serials was “Captain Midnight.” Here was a World War II ace—actually, the story goes back that he was in World War I, and that's how he got his name, Captain Midnight, because he arrived on the scene in the very first episode at the stroke of midnight, so General Steele said, “To me, he will always be Captain Midnight.” And so he was Captain Midnight for the rest of the series. Every so often, they would have a story that would involve a device. You knew darn well after a while that they were going to work up to something that you could send away for. And it always worked into the story. The Jack Armstrong series—“Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy”—did very much the same thing with Wheaties. The sponsor of Captain Midnight was Ovaltine. WE: Hot Ovaltine. RC: Hot Ovaltine. You'd buy the stuff, and I think you took the little seal from inside the lid, cut that out, and you put that in an envelope with a dime taped to it and instructions on what you were sending for. But every year they had a new Code-O-Graph, because Captain Midnight was in charge of a sort of semi-military organization known as the Secret Squadron, which at first was known by the initials SS, until somebody noticed that this also was used by the Nazis, so they changed it to something, I think SQ, something like that. They used to worry about things like that in those days. But anyway, he communicated with the members of the Secret Squadron by ingenious codes which had to be changed every year. They were fairly simple substitution codes with little dials on the devices, so that you'd set it for code A-12, and then you read your numbers around the dial and saw the letters opposite them, and that would spell out a message. At the end of each episode, there would be a message by the announcer, P.R. Andreas [?], for instance, “Okay, get out your new 1946 Code-O-Graph, set it for this,” and then he'd read off the numbers, and then when he was done, he'd say, “Okay, decode that, and you'll know what the message is for today.” WE: One of the things that it interesting is that today—they write about it all the time—immediate gratification, and in those days, one of the things that was fun and exciting—before I take a break here—was to send that off, and then wait for it, and wait for it. “Did it come in the mail today?” Just getting mail was cool. RC: From my bedroom, I could look through a window where I could see the front porch and the mail slot. If I stood up on a chair and I looked out through that window, I could see when the mail came, and it would fall through that slot, and I could spot these manila envelopes that these premiums appeared in, and run like crazy to the front door to get my premiums. WE: Some nice memories going on right now, huh? It's four minutes before ten o' clock. We're going to take a little break here. [Commercial 51:09 to 53:09] WE: That's what I want, epicurean. What does that mean, “epicurean” truffles? Chocolate on the skin? It's one minute, forty-five seconds before we take a break for CNN News on KYMN Radio. My guest this morning, a very interesting individual, his name, Randy Cox, former librarian at St. Olaf College, and a collector of dime novels, a writer himself, and a fan of broadcasting, radio. RC: Old-time radio. WE: You know, I'm just really taken aback. I'm so happy that you went up to the Pavek Museum of Broadcasting. You know, Pavek is a gentleman that made a great contribution that started the museum. Sometimes we wonder whether marketing would be better if we said, “Museum of Broadcasting,” without the “Pavek,” because what does that mean to people outside the thing? But we owe him. Did you know what the first recorded broadcast show was, where they recorded it and then played it back over the network? RC: No, I don't think I do. WE: You probably saw the machine while you were up there. Bing Crosby. RC: Of course. WE: He got a machine from Germany, and we have that original machine at the Pavek. He was the very first person to record his entire show and have it played on tape rather than live. They did a live audience, but then they played it back. It just was marvelous for the industry, because then they could get shows done. Before, it was all live. “Boy, you better be there.” We're going to take a break for the news, and then we're going to come back, and we'll try to get you into high school. RC: [Laughs] All right. WE: I've got to know now, it can't wait: did you play basketball? RC: No, I didn't. WE: But you can watch it and enjoy it, because you know what it's about. All right. This is KYMN Radio, from Northfield, Minnesota, the home of cows, colleges, and contentment, and dime novel collectors. [Transcribed 2015 by Emilee Martell for the Northfield Historical Society]